Archive for the ‘Gear’ Category

I’ve been fishing with a Strong Fishing Pole since… well, since as long as I can remember fishing. Today, though, that has changed. I did my fishing daily and got a Jeweled Fishing Pole in my reward bag. This thing looks cool, and it’s a huge bump in fishing skill. This, plus my fishing hat make me a formidable angler.

In my continuing efforts to increase my DPS and therefore my usefulness to groups, I ran a series of Heroics again this morning. First came Hall of Stone, which was uneventful up to and after the Tribunal of Ages part, where we had to hold out against wave after wave of baddies. I nearly died, and was down to 4.7 HP (with my bubble on cool down from earlier in the fight) and had to chug a runic healing potion to stay alive, but stay alive I did. In fact, it wasn’t until the chaos was over that I learned that only the tank and I had survived. I rezzed everyone else and we completed the rest of dungeon with little fanfare.

As you can see above, I also made it into Culling of Stratholme. This run sticks in my craw and makes me mad thinking about it. The run itself was extremely fast and smooth, but when we killed the Infinite Corruptor, he dropped the Reins of the Bronze Drake. We all greeded on it, except for one jerk who needed and got it. No one seemed to care but me. I’m still pissed that I didn’t even get a shot at that cool mount.

Finally I landed in the Trial of the Crusader with another good group. We had a little trouble with the Grand Champion jousting portion (we lost track of downed baddies and they each hopped back on a mount at least once). I lost my mount twice, but was wise enough to do so near a new horse so I was back in the saddle – so to speak – in no time. We then killed the Grand Champions on foot with little effort. The rest of the dungeon was a cakewalk. When we defeated Eadric the Pure, he dropped the Legplates of Relentless Onslaught. I wanted to need them because they were better then what I had, but I greeded when it dawned on me that I was getting a new, better piece of leg armor once I left the dungeon. When we were done, I finally had the Emblems of Triumph I needed to buy myself Turalyon’s Legplates of Conquest. I socketed it with a Bold Cardinal Ruby for strength and a Smooth Kings Amber for crit rating. Finally I bought some Icescale Leg Armor to complete the piece. Now I’m ready to work on my next part. Let’s get it on!

As I was flying about Northrend, running dailies, a guildie was getting achievement in Ulduar. I congratulated him, of course, which set off a chain reaction that was fun and educational. You see, he was trying to kill Ignis the Furnace Master for the weekly raid quest. As fate would have it, his 25-man raid had a DPS spot open, so I was invited. I was unsure about how much help I could be, but I joined in anyway.

This is about where I found everybody, right at Ignis’ doorstep. We got our act together and – after some random arguing over engineering loot – we set forth to slay the beast.

We did it, obviously, and I got an achievement, to boot. I thanked my guildie for inviting me, and then a weird thing happened. We got talking about my DPS and my gear, and he started lending me advice on how to improve them. I paid attention as best I could and he helped me set an upgrade path via emblems. I found out that for my first upgrade, I need 50 Emblems of Triumph, and – at that point – I had 12. I ran a string of heroics to try and get some more, and it was interesting to say the least.

First up was Azjol-Nerub, which progressed as one would expect a dungeon to go – steady and uneventful. The second one I ran was wild. A pair of players from the same guild were heading up the run and they were trying to break some kind of world speed record, it seemed. They were blitzing through mobs, gathering a ton in one place before turning to fight. This caught the rest of us off guard, but we kept up. Once Keristrasza was dead, I had was up to 27 total Emblems of Triumph, only 23 short of my goal. I queued up again, this time with the server due to go down for Tuesday maintenance in about half an hour. I ended up in Gundrak for the first time, and died on the first set of mobs. Our tank wasn’t very good, our healer had lag issues and our mage went AFK right at the start. We killed the first boss (with the healer and the mage dead), but then the server announced it was going down in 15 minutes. Soon, everybody began bailing and left me alone in the dungeon.

I ‘ported out and logged off as well, with 28 Emblems of Triumph, plus an achievement from the first Gundrak boss. Tonight I hope to get the lost 22 emblems for my new gear. Onwards and upwards!

I mentioned last post that I got a new axe. I like it, but it has presented some problems. For one, my two-handed axe skill was at 378 (out of 400) so that needed work. However, the axe itself lacked the hit rating of my former sword, so that was a problem. I was soon found myself over 40 points shy of being hit-capped, which meant that any damage I was going to do would be tempered with misses. I thought about redoing some of my gems or enchants when it hit me – I could swap out my goggles for that Spiked Titansteel Helmet I’ve been lugging around for months and make up almost all of the hit rating I would lose by going to the axe. Nice! Now I just need to enchant my axe and finish grinding my 2H axe skill (I’m at 283 or so right now) and I’ll be set.

After a guildie and I ran Azjol’Nerub with a pickup group, we rounded up two more guildies and a guildy’s alt to tackle another dungeon, and wound up in the Heroic Trial of the Crusader.

As you can see, we kicked it’s butt. I not only led in DPS with 2.82k to 2.02 (the next highest), but I managed to upgrade my sword. Yes, the Claymore of the Prophet that I’ve been toting for months is now going into retirement for the Edge of Ruin. I couldn’t be much giddier. It was allot of fun (it’s always more fun to run with your friends) and I got a gear upgrade. What a way to spend an evening!

I queued for a random battleground and as luck would have it, I wound up in Eye of the Storm again. I was again – as in my Arathi Basin battle – a little killing machine. I’d bought up some Furious Gladiator’s Scaled Shoulders and entered battle in my prot PvP spec. I ended up with six killing blows, 57 honorable kills and only five deaths. At one point, we were defending the mage’s tower and I ended basically tanking the horde. The horde all wanted me dead for whatever reason, so the healers kept me alive while our DPS (myself included) dropped them. It was impressive. If only we’d won.

I learned something tonight, something wholly unexpected – I can tank for short periods with my current gear. lol I went into Drak’Tharon Keep tonight – more on why in a minute – but after the second boss, our tank bailed. The healer asked me to tank for a while, so I switched to my prot spec, fired off Righteous Fury, pulled out my Teldrassil Protector and my Titansteel Shield Wall and we were off. I had no real problems and we got to King Dred in short order. I’d have done better without my PvP-based setup, like Glyph of Avenger’s Shield, but we had no trouble at all. By the time we got to King Dred, a new tank showed up but he didn’t give me time to go back to ret prior to pulling Dred, so we two-tanked him. After that I went back to ret but then another player dropped, this time our hunter. Something about not running with some certain guild name… we weren’t sure who he was talking about.

For the last eight and a half hours, I’ve been fighting WoW tooth and nail. I, like many players, am struggling to log in. I attempt to load Gavelier, but when I get to the loading screen, the loading bar fills up and then sits there. Forever. You can find more rants and raves in this topic on the WoW forums. I’ll check back in if I ever get back into the game.

On another note, I forgot to mention that after my run through the Old Kingdom the other day, I used my frost emblems to grab the Libram of Three Truths. It seems to have upped my DPS against Cult of the Damned mobs near the Argent Tournament by over a hundred or so DPS. Sweet!

Time for the next chapter in Life of a Hero. We pick up as Gavelier leaves Northshire Abbey.

Stormwind! I was awe-struck when I first found Stormwind, and it’s theme music swelled up. I liked Stormwind as my primary business center for my first 60 or so levels, but that eventually changed. You’ll notice I’m going ‘sword and board’ here. I wasn’t sure what I should be fighting with, so I randomly changed between a one-hander with a shield and a two-hander for the longest time.

OMG, I’m underground! lol I was excited to leave the open air and head underground for the first time, even if it was just the Fargodeep Mine. Kobolds were relatively easy prey, except when they ganged up on me, which they did. Allot. And I died. Allot.

Wow, a treasure chest! This was the first treasure chest I ever found. I was in Fargodeep mine (obviously), and when I saw it I ran to it as fast as Gav’s legs would carry him. I don’t remember what was in it now, though.

Jumping a ways ahead, I found these Pioneer Trousers of the Monkey in Westfall, and they were the first piece of armor I found with an enchantment on them. Thus, I wore them – not concerned with the fact that they were leather armor, vice mail armor. Nor did I know that ‘… of the monkey’ isn’t the best pally enchant. I wasn’t too bright, early on.

Hi, I’m Alphasim . I’ve been playing World of WarCraft for four years now and my main is a level 85 human paladin named Gavelier. Gav features prominently here at Alazar so you'll get to know him and his guild.

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